Selecting wear liners by failure mode, not by hardness

Overview

Hardness is the number everyone quotes and the worst single predictor of liner life. This paper sets out how to identify the dominant wear mechanism in a given application and specify overlay chemistry and geometry against it.

The challenge

Wear liners are routinely specified on a single hardness figure. That works when sliding abrasion dominates and fails everywhere else: a high-hardness overlay that cracks under impact loading, or holds up mechanically but is undercut by corrosion, will fail early regardless of its hardness certificate.

The solution

The paper works through the four mechanisms encountered in bulk material handling (sliding abrasion, impact, corrosion and thermal degradation) with the diagnostic signatures each leaves on a failed liner. It then maps mechanism to overlay chemistry, backing thickness, surface finish and fixing method, including where clad plate outperforms fabricated alternatives and where it does not.

Results

Readers get a specification checklist that ties observed wear patterns to material selection, and a worked example showing how a chute redesign combined with the correct overlay tripled campaign length without increasing installed cost.